Mohist Cycling

“It evolved at about the same time as Confucianism, Taoism and Legalism, and was one of the four main philosophic schools during the Spring and Autumn Period (from 770 BC to 480 BC)[1] and the Warring States Period (from 479 BC to 221 BC). During that time, Mohism (墨 Mo) was seen as a major rival to Confucianism (儒 Ru).”

Now I don’t think that Moism is perfect as he did believe in supernatural causes as a large basis of success or failure but to his credit his credit he did acknowledge a connection between one’s own actions and one’s successes and failures.

Again, for LTRs this seems obvious, but there’s an amazing amount of belief in fatalism today especially concerning cycling.

What is fatalism?

It is the belief that one’s actions don’t really have an effect to enact change. Here are some examples of fatalism:

“It’s unfortunate that there isn’t a safer solution for parking your vehicle when you visit your local gym.”

LTRs know that this is plain silly. Of course there are better solutions. One of them would not to have parallel parking in an area where the average traffic speed is 50 MPH. Duh! Yet, instead of looking for safer means, the AAA believes that there is a mystical reason for why roads are deadly.

This foolishness and sadness is killing many.

Here’s another example, Sierra Club, “It looks nearly hopeless to me…No one seems to care. Such is our climate predicament and its relationship to our young people. The gunman is currently at 400 PPM.”

Um, many of us care, but if the leading environmental organziation has all but given up what are we do to?

Many, many things.

First of all, we must defund these fatalist organizations. They are leading us to ruin.

From Mo:

“Instead of wealth, they get poverty, instead of large population, they got a small one, and instead of order, they got chaos. Fundamentally, is to lose what is desired but to get what is disliked. What is the reaon? It was due to the large number of fatalists among the people.”

I totally agree. Instead of understaing traffic collisions as preventable problems created by human activity, we call them accidents as if they are an act of God. I believe that God gave us our vast intelligence in order to make ourselves safe, and I don’t blame him when humans, working in a human designed system, hurt and maim other humans. Such a belief is to give all your power away.

“Fatalists say that when fate decrees a country will be rich, it is rich. When fate decress a country will be poor, a country will be poor.”

See the similarity between the notion of accidents and the idea that they “just happen”?

“[With belief in fate,] what use is there in exerting effort? With this doctrine [fatalists] tried to persuade the rulers to preventcommon people doing their work. Therefore, they are not men of humanity.”

Again, like Mo, I believe that these do nothing organizations are not only useless to solving the problems they pretend to want to solve, but they are actively getting in the way by not demanding strong action because they decieve us into believing that we can’t stop these very human created problems.

Let’s stand up to fatalists and instead of listening to their time sucking and energy draining nonsense, let’s think big and implement some real change. Fatalists have the choice of either following us or by shutting up and getting out of our way.

Real change happens in our minds first; if we are afraid to dream big, to plan big, and to spend big, we’ll be poor and impotent.